


staring at the end

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [59]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Breakup, Gen, Post Series 2, argument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 03:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14151300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: “Are you sure you want to do this?” Laura asks, cutting to the chase. “I know what you said before, but it’s different now. It’s not just a handful of them you can walk away from. It’s the whole world.”





	staring at the end

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 3, Day 5 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was ‘breakup’. 
> 
> It might show a little, but I’m kind of ready for Joe to leave...

Proliferation changes a lot of things, but some wheels were already in motion, and they don’t just change their course. They keep going, hurtling towards the inevitable. Joe Hawkins, for all his faults, is one of them.

For Sophie’s sake, they have vowed to keep their parting civil. Joe is sleeping at his dad’s until the paperwork goes through on his new house, and he comes to collect his things six days after the awakening. He fights the urge to roll his eyes when it’s a synth, not one of his family, who answers the door.

“You must be Mr Hawkins,” says the synth. “I recognise you from the pictures. My name is Yuma.”

Thankfully, she doesn’t have the nerve to invite him into what is, for a couple more days at least, his own house. She stands back, and Joe enters. He counts four more synths in the hallway alone. God knows how many she’s collected by now.

“Is Laura here?” he asks Yuma, who’s watching him with curious, bright eyes.

“I believe she is in the kitchen.”

Yuma points, as if he doesn’t know the way. Joe passes her, not even bothering to take in the number of synths who are milling around in the room. Laura’s sat at the table, phone to her ear, laptop in front of her. Mia’s sitting by her side, filing papers into a large black folder.

“Of course, I understand. Yes, I’ll hold,” Laura’s saying, in what is unmistakably her Work Voice. She leans over to say something quietly to Mia, gesturing at her screen. Then she looks up, and notices Joe standing at the head of what had once been the family dinner table. Now, apparently, it’s some kind of office.

“Joe,” she says, and her voice isn’t warm or cold, it’s somewhere in between, like she’s simply stating the fact of his existence without committing herself to an opinion on it. That sounds about right, Joe thinks.

Laura hands the phone over to Mia, barely glancing in the synth’s direction but trusting her to take it.

“I’ve come to get the rest of my stuff,” Joe says, but she’s standing up and walking towards him, so he doesn’t say anything more until he’s followed her into the utility room. It’s the only area of the house he’s seen so far where there aren’t any synths.

“Cosy meeting spot,” he remarks, trying a smile. Laura attempts to return it. Ridiculous, really, that they should come down to this, after twenty-two years of marriage. Hiding in their own house, exchanging awkward glances over the washing machine.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Laura asks, cutting to the chase. “I know what you said before, but it’s different now. It’s not just a handful of them you can walk away from. It’s the whole world.”

Joe looks at her, trying to discern if there’s hope in her eyes or if she’s just trying to put nails in the coffin. “Does it change anything, really, though?” he asks, trying not to sound bitter. “You know as well as I do, it doesn’t matter how many there are. Whether there’s five of them or five million, you’ll be choosing them over me.”

“That’s not fair,” she says, and the coldness is there now for sure.

“I think it’s exactly fair. Isn’t that what this is? I don’t want to help them. I don’t want to implicate our family - our _kids_ , for Christ’s sake - in whatever mess this is heading for. And because of that, I’m not welcome here. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You _are_ wrong,” she says. “I never told you you had to leave. This is all you, you’re the one who’s running away!” She throws up a hand in frustration. “Don’t help with any of this, fine, sit here and pretend the present isn’t happening, but don’t you ever say I sent you away. You are _choosing_ not to live with your kids. That’s what’s happening here.”

“For now, I won’t be with them,” he admits. “But it won’t be long before they start missing their real lives. What kind of home are you providing them at the moment?” He gestures towards the door. “It’s a madhouse. You’re out of your depth, Laura. At least one of us has to carry on some semblance of normality, for the kids to–”

“You’re doing it again!” Laura cuts in. “You’re using the kids as an excuse, as if you know _anything_ about how they feel about it. This is their world now. From their perspective, you’re cutting them off! Do you think Mattie will ever set foot in your synth-free village? Does that sound like something she’d do?”

Joe declines to take that bait. He just stares straight ahead.

“It’s not just us now,” Laura says, more quietly. “It’s all out in the open.”

He scoffs. “And if you think that makes it _less_ dangerous, you’re kidding yourself.”

“Of course it’s dangerous. It’s going to be a long and difficult process.” Laura leans back against a cupboard door. “For now, we’re seeing about getting a place, a centre, to house as many as we can. Once we do, the kids won’t be surrounded by them twenty-four seven, but I can’t tell you they won’t be involved. It’s too late for that, Joe. I just wish you could see it.”

Joe watches her, the woman he has loved half his life. She is immovable. He doesn’t know why he ever wondered otherwise. Hasn’t she been the same since they met?

“We can either keep having the same argument,” he says, after a silence, “Or we can just admit it. We’re never going to agree on this, and it’s too… it’s massive, Laur. It’s…. irreconcilable.” He ducks his head, speaks humbly for the first time in a while. “I keep on expecting you to change for me, and maybe you would have, once. Maybe we could’ve compromised, if we thought we had something worth fighting for. If I hadn’t…. thrown that away.”

Laura meets his eyes, and he sees gratitude there, a bittersweet relief that he’s finally acknowledging it. Too late, and not enough, but there at last, hanging in the air between them. The fabled mea culpa.

Joe takes a deep breath. “So yes. Yes, I’m sure, I want to do this. I just need a few things from the bedroom. Then I’ll be off.”

She nods. Her voice is tight. “As long as you’re sure. I want you to remember how this went.”

“I will,” he promises.

And then he melts from the room, and through the house, in a loop that takes him out of seventy-two, Highbridge Drive, and out of everything he knows.


End file.
